Given your rather extensive restrictions
Unfortunately, given your constraints on the argument
I didn't mean to place restrictions on the discussion, I just meant rather that I've seen most of those arguments before, and yet am not quite satisfied with their assumptions and methodology. Please feel free to argue in whatever mode you prefer. I do find it likely that the arguments we may present here will "boil down" to one of the ones I have already listed however.
Because you wouldn't want it to be done to you.
This would be satisfyingly simple, however it doesn't actually satisfy my problem unfortunately. I don't want needles stuck in my body, but getting vaccinations is not wrong (oh god please no one argue this
), and it is similarly easy to come up with other examples of things I do not want done to me which are wrong. Unless you insist otherwise of course; perhaps there is some deeper truth here?
If pressed I'd use an argument based roughly on rule-utilitarianism/contradiction
Unfortunately your utilitarian argument is just a subset of the empirical argument as far as I can tell. "If we murder, then we observe utility to decrease because of these things (fear, waste of time, etc), and decrease in utility is wrong". I do like the angle here though, I hadn't really considered generic 'utility' as a factor. Also, I suppose I ought to make my inquiry more specific: I am interested in the morality of the action, the decrease in utility it not necessarily a "wrong" thing.
I'd like to add namely it violates free will.
Perhaps I misunderstand your wording here, but I don't see any 'violation' of free will. If an agent with free will chooses to murder another, it was merely an exercise of his will to commit the act. Maybe what you're actually arguing is that "removing free will from the world is wrong"? However, at this junction we return to my original inquiry "Why is murder wrong?" just with a different set of words. Perhaps it may be valuable to the discussion in its own right to note that murder is the intentional killing of another sentient life form, aka removing an agent with free will from the world. I'm not really interested in killing bugs and stuff.
You're correct in your assumption that I'm not interested in your argument about sociopathic disorders because they stem from the social contract. Additionally, I do not see why making a judgement call about the value of your free will against the value of another's is a prerequisite for murder. I could murder someone merely at whim, or because I found it funny (obviously a social disorder, but that's not the point). I agree murder must be a choice, accidental manslaughter is not the topic at hand, but I don't see why you require a specific valuation of free will in order to commit murder. Perhaps if you believe this is actually true you could endeavor to show that all murder must evaluate the target's free will agency before being committed?
The best possibly most accurate response is "because we said so,"
This is an argument from transcendental authority, and as you said, is insufficient for my purposes.
ETA: I asked Berkly, and he said it's wrong because it is a waste of resources. Can't argue with that.
I agree with Lanthanide, in that it is simple to construct a scenario in which 'wasting resources' is a good thing. Additionally, at a more fundemental level, if you wished to continue along this argument we would need to show that murder necessitates a waste of resources, and then continue to show why wasting resources is wrong. "Wasting resources" being wrong makes sense in the sort of utilitarian arguments jjf28 presented but does not seem as evident to me in a moral context.
Here is the simplest argument I have formulated to date. Unfortunately it requires us to assume that pain is wrong, whereas I can easily construct many examples where pain is a good thing. But it goes something like this: Everyone can feel pain, and pain is wrong. Murder causes pain, therefore murder is wrong. Simple, but insufficient. I was thinking perhaps there may be a way to separate "good" pains from "wrong" pains, but I don't know if pain can form a sufficient basis for the morality involved with murder.
None.